Maria Mocerino

Day 1: MEETING AT Mall AS OASIS and OUR Drive over to Houston’s 

Barbara Harris’ beat-up but won’t give up Honda Civic pulls into the oasis as mall in Scottsdale, Arizona to Donny Osmond’s “Soldier of Love” blasting from a Happy Hour bar. Na na na nana… Maria is sitting on a bench facing a very large, very empty Sur la Table. Barbara Harris crosses a driveway, so they have this conversation on their way back to the car, it’s not far. Just across the way.

B: (sing-songy) Is that you? 

M: Hi! 

B: (pitched high) Heyy…

M: Hi I’m Maria…

B: (pitched high) Ye-ah… 

M: Hi…How are you? 

B: (pitched high) Good, how are you? 

M: I’m great. I’m just… 

B: Good.

M: Here. Well, um. 

B: I was thinking, unless you have another idea… 

M: We can do whatever, just in case, I made a reservation at this Italian place down here that I heard was alright, but what you thinking? 

B: Well, I was thinking, where I know for sure that the food is great. 

M: Well, let’s go there… 

B: You wanna try it? 

M: I’d love to… 

B: Houston? Near my neighborhood…just in case… 

M: That sounds great. 

B: And they also do ve-gan…all kinds of stuff… 

M: That sounds great!

B: It’s really fabulous… 

M: Let’s do it! 

B: I haven’t eaten…

M: Me neither…

B: In days!

M: Oh you haven’t eaten in days? Well let’s go eat. 

B: Yeah. 

M: I’m so hungry too…

B: I’m STARVING… 

Like a SHOT in the dark…

M: (sort of laughing) Yeah me too, how did your, uh, appointment go? 

B: (sound of hunger) My what?

M: How did your appointment go?

B: (a bit winded) Oh I was late, I thought I left my phone upstairs, I had to go back…I locked up…and then it was in my car so…

M: Oh no…

B: And there you were sitting on the bench… that’s Maria

(monkey sound?)

M: That’s me, oh yeah that’s me, sitting on a bench!

Deep in the night, can’t get enough, I’m a soldier of love…

B: This is fun… here…

M: This, this, little, sun…

B: Whatever…

M: Sun shade…

B: I can’t go without…hot…I’m okay…oh…

M: So how was the appointment, what happened?

B: Oh not much…(beep)…really… (beep) but I have to…(beep) um, um, say, that he was really nice about it. I was late and then he told me how to get over here a different way which I did (laughs) which I’m a little, so I would have gotten here a little but earlier, but I think it’s a cute place. I don’t really know the restaurants so…it’s a tad expensive. I would pay mine… and would wanna go dutch then?

M: Yeah, sure of course.

B: Great, okay.

M: Listen.

B: As of now…we’re just…

M: We’re just hanging..

B: Just hanging…okay…

M: We’re hanging…no no no no…we’re just hanging. (Sings) Getting to know you, getting to know all about you…

B: Are you a singer too?

M: Yeah. B

B: Do you take singing lessons?

M: Um, I did, that’s how I started, um…

B: Yeah?

M: Yeah, but.

B: Buut?

M: But um, I… was always shy about it…I could never do it.

B: I understand completely, I told Lerner I couldn’t sing…

B: I was lucky to finally have a good singing teacher, I…

M: Do you need a singing teacher?

B: I did, I told Lerner, when he wrote a clear day… that…you’re writing songs for me, and I said I don’t SING… by the way I didn’t have a comb for my hair and I have stop somewhere and get a comb.

M: Get a comb? That’s fine… 

B: Not really. I mean, I just washed it…

M: Don’t make me feel alone…my hair is…

B: Wonderful…

M: Wild… (laughs)

B: Curly…lucky dog.

M: Ugh… but…

B: Have you around this area?

M: No, I mean I just got here today, so I, you know…

B: It’s so cute, you know, the stores are cute, I keep, thinking, there always, um, Christmas’ just adorable here. In this section.

M: Oh, I’m sure.

B: Oh, hm, so I think I’m going to go towards Scottsdale Road…if I can figure this out…let’s see..

M: The arrow…

B: It’s impossible…to do the wrong thing…except for that…

M: Except for that, and making a left sometimes is, you know, a little tricky… I think you’re good…

B: If I can find it…laughing…

M: Yeah you’re good.

B: Alrighty.

M: Here we go…

B: And it will be, are you okay?

M: Yeah…

B: So we’ll go to a place like Houstons, and we’ll see, they do sneak around, we’re going to Houstons, and um, I do need like a baked potato with…

M: Some good stuff in there, sour cream, butter, chives?

B: Maybe a piece of steak…

M: YEAH some meat…

B: Oh Gawd, I’ve been so, I’m just been drinking um stuff that’s too many fruits that I churn up and then I drink this powder and it’s been so long since I’ve eaten. And I, I’m sure, it will be okay, tell you that…

M: Yeah…so what,what, was today’s appointment about?

B: Oh, I sort of don’t want to talk about that…

M: Oh that’s okay.

B: Different things happened, you know, and it’s looks like, maybe, I won’t have that operation after all.

M: Okay, good.

B: Um.

M: That must be a bit of a relief. Right?

B: Yes.

M: Yeah.

B: Huge relief. I don’t even think they have, they call sleep apnea, I just breathe a little, didn’t I tell you this? There’s nothing really to say except you have to run around a lot, and I have to find out what I owe. I decided not to even look at it…

M: (laughs) for another day…

B: Later… I’ve got nothing but papers, and I avoid those…and, so.

M: (Laughs)

B: And um…

M: Yeah, no paper, I, um, yeah.

B: You do have ways of getting tests taken off, when I was working, or between jobs, I think I was able to take off anything like a dinner, or a this or a that, if I said one line of work, isn’t that true for you?

M: Um yeah, at this point, I’m a freelancer…so it kinda works a little bit differently, yeah, so I have my own health insurance for now. I’m not a staff writer anywhere, I mean, I work for a magazine, but…

B: I wish I knew what magazine, you didn’t tell me, I’m going to find out.

M: Well, I’ll tell you… right now, it’s not, it’s a completely different um, world, so it’s not like, you know the piece I’m working on is not for them. But the magazine is called Rogue. They do mostly, which is something I’m not interested in the least bit, is like kinda interviews with up and coming artists and actors and all that kinda thing, but I was hired to build up the culture section, so I focus a lot more on think pieces or interviews but with artists or kinda um not necessarily Hollywood, I mean, it’s a magazine based in Los Angeles, so it’s kinda geared towards that, and I’m like (blows through lips) like I don’t really…

B: Is it hard to get people to interview…

M: No, it’s not actually…I mean, for certain people, they, I guess, they are trying to, um, promote themselves, present themselves, so it’s a little bit of the game that they play. And some people don’t respond to that kind of thing anyway.

B: What kind of people do you go after…

M: A lot of times they approach us, and sometimes, one of the women I wanted to interview was a director who did this incredible documentary called Queens of Syria. I mean, this story is so incredible, Barbara. So a group of Syrian women, women, women Syrian refugees, who fled to Jordan, they put up a contemporary version of Trojan Women using their own stories, and she made a documentary about it, and the thing that was so incredibly powerful, was that, just how theater can really, has really almost a therapeutic thing, you saw these women reading Trojan Women and then responding to the story and they built their own stories around it, so you have these women, right? Like, they did this one exercise, where they gave them a giant sheet of butcher…

B: Were they speaking English?

M: No, they were speaking Arabic.

B: Do you speak Arabic?

M: No, it was just translated.

B: Okay.

M: And they gave them a huge piece of butcher paper and they said, we wanna know every place you went to on your way to get here to Aman…you know, if you think about it, these women are silenced and cannot even really tell their stories, and in the process of them telling their stories, it helped them to get out of a position of victimhood…

B: Hm…they thought, did they think if there would be repercussions?  

M: OH yeah they did, the show, as it got closer, over half of them dropped out, they got so scared…

B: Yeah…

M: With that director, I’ve been reaching out to her, just because, I think the project itself brings in a lot of issues we should talk about, in terms of storytelling and theater, and helping people go through trauma…

B: Yeah, so she, but she was doing it, to pull together, make..

M: So those are the people I go after… I just did an interview with my friend, um, who just published her first book. And she’s a complete weirdo, and I just totally love it. She’s very David Lynchy, these really bizarre almost surreal like writing, and so sitting and talking to her is really fun because she just has a really unique voice, and so.

B: Did she publish it through a publisher?

M: Yeah, through a publisher.

B: Which publisher?

M: Serpent’s Tail… she’s based in Europe, so…and now, it’s coming out in the US, and it’s Danskt publishing, something with a D, um, and she’s really cool because she was born in the Ukraine during the USSR, so we can talk about these things. I always try, especially because this magazine is so geared to, I think, a really specific audience, there’s a part of me that wants to bring in as many perspectives as possible, so talking about that time in history…

B: How do you pull this together? Do you know what you’re going to do when you start out?

M: Yeah, you know, it’s interesting, at the same time, what I’m interested in…is, um, I’m interested in a human being, and what they’re about, what they’re interested in, so I, I plan a bit…

B: How do you discuss things…unless you have an interpreter there…

M: All of them speak English or in French…

B: You know French?

M: Yeah…

B: Wow, nice…

M: Yeah…

B: You said you were in France…

M: Yeah yeah, and I did clowning…I told you that…

B: There’s a clown school in Florida, is that anything interesting?

M: I don’t know, how do you know it?

B: Some people said that they went there, whatever clown is in is maybe very different than the one they’re talking about, I don’t know what it means. Is it sort of Marceau?

M: Yeah, it’s performance clown, so you have Auguste, naif, and just the red nose, but you don’t necessarily have to wear the red nose, and I mean, I guess it comes from the same performance clown…

B: Different, okay…

M: I remember, you’re just present, you’re not trying to make anybody laugh, you know what I mean? You’re just trying to come from a place of truth, right? A lot of Viola Spolin’s exercises remind me of what we did in clown.

B: I have to get her book… been thinking about that lately. She’s obstruse in a way, sometimes it’s hard to figure out what she’s talking about because she’s so nervous about…oh here’s that guy, what’s over there for? Ohh, anyhow, they should wear something on their heads…

M: Yeah…

B: and bodies…

M: Helmet…

B: Yeah, oh he doesn’t have a helmet on… we have so many accidents here, and then we have drowning babies all the time in swimming pools. Do you have that in LA? Oh my god.

M: God, Really?

B: Hm, why do they have swimming pools? I don’t understand.

M: Well, if you’re going to have a swimming pool, why don’t you put something around it?

B: They do. They do, and they still. Kids still get in the gate, they leave the gate open.

M: Oh wow.

B: Or the parent falls asleep or something.

M: It’s so funny like being out there, um, such a, um, kinda particular feel.

B: Yeah.

M: I don’t even know how to describe it.

B: Fat ox, that just opened, it’s very pretentious around here, a lot of it, and there is an Italian restaurant I haven’t been to in a looong time, and this other place, it’s got too many people coming, they don’t take reservations, and there’s a whole bunch…um…rose, this is where I live here. And all this stuff is new…everything is new.

M: Wow, everything is new…

B: Shops…

M: So was it just more land…I guess..

B: It was all very quiet. We had, you know, tons of, you know, it was like Little Italy, Italian cobblestone streets and nobody did a whole lot of…stuff here, oh shut up, (honk)…

M: Oh shut up, yeah…

B: They have an actual green light, so, okay sir sir sir (high pitched)

M: I know, isn’t it fright, people get so pushy in cars…

B: (high pitched) Yes they do, they’re all late…

M: They’re all late (sexy)… but it’s…

B: But, it’s hard to say, we’ll try that place only because I want a potato and a steak (cute).

M: You want a potato and a steak, let’s get you that (punches fist). I um,

B: Sighs…yeah…

M: I have to say…I love a steak..

B: breathy …While I am awake anyway …but I forget to eat vegetables..I..

M: Oh yeah?

B: Wonderful…you know, they do all this stuff here. Sometimes I get sort of sick of it but… now what night is tonight again?

M: (Proper, ready) Today is Tuesday.

B: Shouldn’t be too, yeah, every night is out out.

M: Is it?

B: Yeah because they’re all snowbirds and they like to eat out

M: I like the snowbirds, what’s the snowbirds…

B: Well they come here for a couple of months…

M: Ohhhh…

B: And then they leave…

M: Ohhhh…

B: And they have these…normally, I don’t see too many people here, but there are so many coming…

M: Well

B: hmmm

M: We’ll see, I guess this is a popular part of the world, deep laughs, I don’t know…

B: There’s more and more cars, there’s a big car lot everywhere, ummm, I’d rather, see if I should run over these two people and…

M: Yeah let’s run over those people…

B: Population explosion…

M: No one will notice…

B: I’ll be helping that population…

M: That’s right, thank you… 

B: Maybbeeee. Maybe it’s crowded (goofy) yeah, there are people waiting.

M: There’s only two people waiting…

B: We’ll see.

M: Yeah we’ll see.

B: Yeah. Well, sometimes when I come here, I don’t know if they give us much of a…

M: I think that’s a parking space right there just in front of you.

B: Okay…doesn’t look like one. Perfect. Are you in for this kind of, but they do every kind of stuff here, so…

M: Here’s the thing, number one, I love a steak.

B: Yeah?

M: Yeah.

B: Okay.

M: Yeah.

B: Well you don’t have to.

M: No no,

B: I’ll die here…  

M: NO, I really I really do um.

Out of the car…

M: I think…

B: You haven’t eaten or anything?

M: (whispers) I mean…

B: Oh-oh.

M: You know I, I, I, when you get someplace and you’re like I don’t know where I am, I don’t know where I’m doing (laughs). I’m just going to leave this bag in the car, I think it’s fine, right?

B: Yeah. Well you wanna…

M: Oh maybe just put it back here? With the, cover it with the sun, something.

B: Oh yeah, perfect.

M: Do you need uh, glasses or anything?

B: Well, yes I do and I think.

M: These?

B: And maybe because I don’t have a comb (cute whiney). I just have to find a comb.

M: You, oh, wait wait. There’s a comb right there.  

B: Oh yay.

M: Yay.

B: Oh gawd…

M: Oh…

B: I wash my hair…and I… comb…

M: I don’t even own a comb…so…

B: Straiiiight. You don’t?

M: No, I don’t own a comb.

B; Lucky youuu.

M: I mean, it has… it has its own..

B: Oh knots. There’s a little choir back there… yeah… that’s where the Italian restaurant is.

BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP BEEP.